Quotations: Keyword Beginning with "A"

Ability
"If we all did the things we are capable of doing we would literally astound ourselves."
--Thomas Alva Edison

"I know God will not give me anything I can't handle, I just wish (God) didn't trust me so much."
--Mother Teresa

"If ya ain't got it in ya, ya can't blow it out."
--Louis Armstrong

"They are able because they think they are able."
--Virgil

"If only every man would make proper use of his strength and do his utmost, he need never regret his limited ability."
--Cicero

Accomplish
"If you want to accomplish the goals of your life, you have to begin with the Spirit."
--Oprah Winfrey (1954-) Speech to the American Women's Economic Development Corp., New York, 25 Feb 1989

Achievement
"It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever -- the one who recognizes the challenges and does something about it."
--Vince Lombardi {1913-1970, American Football Coach}

"We'd never know how high we are till we are called to rise; and then, if we are true to plan, our statures touch the sky."
--Emily Dickinson

"Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only (those) who keep (their) eyes fixed on the far horizon will find (their) right road."
--Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the U.N. and 1961 Nobel Peace Prize Winner

"It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog."
--Joseph Conrad

"He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying."
--Friedrich Nietzsche

"The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become."
--Harold Taylor

"We only do well the things we like doing."
--Colette

"Every great human achievement is preceded by extended periods of dedicated, concentrated effort."
--Brian Tracy

Acknowledgement
"Acknowledgement is half of correction."
--Russian Proverb

Action
"Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world."
--Joel Barker

"Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action."
--Benjamin Disraeli

"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
--Will Rogers

"When you see a snake, never mind where he came from."
--W. G. Benham

"The great end of life is not knowledge but action."
--Henry David Thoreau

"Remember, people will judge you by your actions, not your intentions. You may have a heart of gold, but so does a hard-boiled egg."
--Unknown

Adversity
"A man is insensible to the relish of prosperity till he has tasted adversity."
--Sa'id

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
--Albert Camus

"Adversities do not make a man frail. They show what sort of man he is."
--Thomas Kempris

"All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you."
--Walt Disney

"He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper."
--Edmund Burke

"We find comfort among those who agree with us - growth among those who don't."
--Frank A. Clark

"A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain."
--Mildred W. Struven

Advice
"Everybody knows good counsel except him that has need of it."
--German Proverb

"We ask advice, but we mean approbation."
--Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832), English author, clergyman

"No one wants advice -- only corroboration."
--John Steinbeck (1902-1968) U.S. author

"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't."
--Erica Jong (b. 1942), U.S. author

"Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least."
--Earl of Chesterfield

"Who cannot give good counsel? 'Tis cheap, it costs them nothing."
--Robert Burton

"Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their breath."
--John Updike

"Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it."
--Gordon R. Dickson

"The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not and never persist in trying to set people right."
--Hannah Whitall Smith, writer and evangelist

Age
“We turn not older with years, but newer every day."
--Emily Dickinson

"Age is only a number, a cipher for the records. A man can't retire his experience. He must use it. Experience achieves more with less energy and time."
--Bernard Mannes Baruch (1870-1965) American stock broker, public official, political advisor

"A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams."
--John Barrymore

"Our judgment ripens; our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the Spring of life and the fruits of its Autumn."
--Thomas Babington Macaulay

"Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits."
--Samuel Butler

"Old age ain't no place for sissies."
--Bette Davis

"I never knew so young a body with so old a head."
--William Shakespeare (1564-1616), "The Merchant of Venice"

"You yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am if like a crab you could go backward."
--William Shakespeare (1564-1616), "Hamlet"

Agreement
"We find comfort among those who agree with us - growth among those who don't."
--Frank A. Clark

Aim
"In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high."
--Henry David Thoreau, American essayist & poet

Alternatives
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives."
--Abba Eban (b. 1915) South African-born, Israeli diplomat and statesman

"The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously."
--Henry Kissinger (b. 1923) German-born, U.S.A. political scientist, foreign-policy advisor, and Secretary of State

"No alternative' is also an alternative."
--Jewish folk saying

Ambition
"I had no ambition to make a fortune. Mere money-making has never been my goal. I had an ambition to build."
--John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

"The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become."
--Harold Taylor

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
--Mark Twain

"If you can imagine it, You can achieve it. If you can dream it, You can become it."
--William Arthur Ward

"Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement."
--Snoopy

"The height of your accomplishments will equal the depth of your convictions."
--William F. Scolavino

"If ambition doesn't hurt you, you haven't got it."
--Kathleen Norris

"The world is so fast that there are days when the person who says it can't be done is interrupted by the person who is doing it."
--Anonymous

"Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings."
--C. Archie Danielson

Anger
"When anger spreads through the breast, guard thy tongue from barking idly."
--Sappho

"It usually takes two people to make one of them angry."
--Laurence Peter

"Anybody can become angry - that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy."
--Aristotle

"If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase. At first, keep quiet and count the days when you were not angry: ‘I used to be angry every day, then every other day: next, every two, then every three days!’ and if you succeed in passing thirty days, sacrifice to the gods in thanksgiving."
--Epictetus

Animals
"We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form."
--William R. Inge

"The dog alone, of all brute animals, has an affection upwards to man."
--Samuel T. Coleridge

"I agree with Agassig that dogs possess something very like a conscience."
--Charles Darwin

"The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog....When all other friends desert, he remains."
--George Graham West

Anticipation
"There is nothing so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it in expecting evil before it arrives?
--Marcus Annaeus Seneca

"Some of your hurts you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you endured, From evils which never arrived!"
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Apathy
"A different world cannot be built by indifferent people."
--Peter Marshall

Appearance
"Judge not the horse by his saddle."
--Chinese Proverb

Appease
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
--Winston Churchill

Appreciation
"The deepest principle of Human Nature is the craving to be appreciated."
--William James

"Appreciate people. Nothing gives more joy than appreciation."
--Ruth Smeltzer

"Appreciative words are the most powerful force for good on earth!"
--George W. Crane

Argument
"People's minds are changed through observation and not through argument."
--Will Rogers

"Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance."
--Robert Quillen

Arts
"I made some mistakes in drama. I thought the drama was when the actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries."
--Frank Capra, American film director

"Life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one."
--Stella Adler, American actress, founded "Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting"

"Man is a make-believe animal -- he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part."
--William Hazlitt (1778-1830), British essayist noted for literary criticism

Attention
"I think the one lesson I have learned is that there is no substitute for paying attention."
--Diane Sawyer

"One should learn to enjoy the neighbor's garden, however small; the roses straggling over the fence, the scent of lilacs drifting across the road."
--Henry Van Dyke

Attitude
"Our attitudes control our lives. Attitudes are a secret power working twenty-four hours a day, for good or bad. It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force."
--Tom Blandi

" If we choose to be offended when we don't get our own way, then we're going to live constantly on the edge of anger. But if we say to ourselves, ‘A merry heart does good like a medicine,’ it'll make all the difference in the world."
--Charles R. Swindoll

"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."
--Albert Einstein

"Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.
--John Wooden

"A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes."
--Hugh Downs

"No PESSIMIST ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit."
--Helen Keller

"Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost."
--Robert H. Schuller

"A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties."
--Harry Truman

"There is no investment you can make which will pay you so well as the effort to scatter sunshine and good cheer through your establishment."
--Orison Swett Marden

"An inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather."
--Washington Irving

"If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet."
--Isaac Bashevis Singer

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind."
--William James (1842-1910)

"You cannot tailor make your situation in life, but you can tailor make your attitudes to fit those situations."
--Zig Ziglar (American Author & Motivational Speaker)

"A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes."
--Hugh Downs

"Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society."
--William Makepeace Thackeray

"I keep the telephone of my mind open to peace, harmony, health, love and abundance. Then, whenever doubt, anxiety or fear try to call me, they keep getting a busy signal - and soon they'll forget my number."
--Edith Armstrong

"Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses."
--Alphonse Karr

"Watch your manner of speech if you wish to develop a peaceful state of mind. Start each day by affirming peaceful, contented and happy attitudes and your days will tend to be pleasant and successful."
--Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993), American Pastor, speaker & author

Automobiles
"If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside."
--Robert Cringely

Awakening
"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams, who looks inside, awakes."
--Carl Gustav Jung

Awareness
"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep."
--Henry David Thoreau

"The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness."
--Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), British Novelist & Essayist




A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Quotes Home

The Wisdom Tree Home

ptreat@thewisdomtree.com